Misplaced Adorations
by owlofathena
Summary: MM HG. Adolescent affection towards a certain professor at Hogwarts has a catastrophic effect on others. Two-chaptered story.


_An unexpected story…that I began to write three years ago, and gave up trying to make a one-shot because I knew if I uploaded the first chapter, you would all harp on me to finish it (rather than me spending another decade humming and hawing over flaws of the oneshot). Credit to asouldreams for sending persistent reminders to go write and giving me wisdom on how it might end. This story is two chapters long - the second part is slightly longer and mostly finished - but you all know what that is worth. _

_Canon is a little fudged here and there, and when I say 'fudged', I mean that I've resurrected/altered/restructured to fit my aims (ie; I haven't a clue where Dumbledore got off to.) Please play along._

* * *

Each autumn brought new students and new heartaches to the school, and - much to the chagrin of the student's educators - not all of the latter were directed at other teenagers.

Infatuations with teachers were not an unknown phenomenon at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, indeed, locked in a castle for ten odd months of the year, it was all but expected that the ample quantity of hormones raging through their bodies would drive adolescents to make odd choices for the recipients of their affections, occasionally bestowing the dubious honour on the adult staff members of the school.

Professor Sinistra was the typical suspect. Slender and soft-spoken, with large dark eyes framed by long lashes, the Astronomy professor was the object of many a student's more-than-platonic crush, although she remained naïve of all but the most obvious of them and was always shocked when one of her colleagues informed her that a pupil's enthusiasm in extra credit work was not motivated by academic interest. For the more athletically-inclined, the ever-approachable Madame Hooch was almost as crushable as Sinistra, attracting the attentions of almost half the Quidditch students she coached - male and female.

It wasn't limited to the female teachers. During his relatively brief stay at the school Gilderoy Lockhart had won over most of the female body, including several of his fellow teachers, although the affection had quickly worn off once it was discovered that the man was not nearly the wizard that existed in his literary adventures. Before he had retired, the handsome, dashing and painfully dim Care of Magical Creatures teacher Silvanus Kettleburn had been a favourite recipient of schoolgirl crushes, although interest had lessened when he had lost an arm from an infected Crup bite (he had ignored Healer's advice to have it treated - Poppy had never forgiven him for it) and dwindled down to almost none after the wizard had both legs torn off by a Welsh Green while hiking in the Cornwall district. Kettleburn had retired after this incident, and now ran a Hippogriff Sanctuary in Spain from the comfort of an enchanted wheel chair. The man still received love notes from his more persistent admirers.

There were exceptions among the staff, of course. Professor McGonagall's fearsome aura of power, both magical and disciplinary, did little to encourage romantic notions in her pupils. Students didn't harbor crushes on teachers that were universally feared.

Usually.

* * *

'A student is stalking me,' Severus Snape announced as he strode into the staffroom under a figurative storm cloud, black robes billowing menacingly around his legs. 'I found Miriam Boyles lurking underneath my desk this morning after class. When I asked what she was doing there, she claimed to have lost an earring and suggested I assist her in finding it.'

Only one teacher out of the dozen scattered around the sun-drenched room spared a glance up from their work. 'Boyles...Boyles...' said Charity Burbage as she tapped a finger on her lower lip, looking pensive. 'Ravenclaw seventh year? Brown hair? Attractive in a French sort of way? '

Charity was dreadful with names. Snape ignored her and walked directly to the tea set at the far end of the room.

'Hufflepuff fourth year. Curly blonde hair, glasses, chews her fingernails incessantly,' came the brisk answer from the centre table. Minerva McGonagall had every student and their time table memorized – useful for determining which students walking the halls during the day actually had a spare period - and could usually provide biographical information about a child's extended family on demand. It was quite an impressive skill considering that there were almost 300 students at the school. Minerva didn't look up from her marking as she continued. 'Her parents are wealthy stockbrokers in Surrey – she took Muggle Studies in her third year but chose not to continue after the first term.'

The Muggle Studies professor dropped her book into her lap and leaned forward, looking back and forth between Minerva and Severus with a disbelieving expression on her face. 'You can't possibly mean that ridiculous girl who ran away a few years back? The one the Ministry pulled out of a bog? Not _that_ horrid girl?!'

If one ignored Harry Potter's annual encounters with the dark forces, the escape of a muggle-born eleven-year-old during the second week of flying lessons had been one of the more memorable events of the past decade. A determined and homesick Miriam had slipped away unnoticed while a friend had caused a diversion, flown her school broom as far as it would take her before crashing into a peat bog a dozen miles away (thus fulfilling the common complaint of the Comet 200 series – sudden loss of height at unexpected and typically inconvenient times).

A team of Obliviators had been called in to wipe the memory of the muggle farmer who had found the young girl - covered in mud and holding a broken broom - wandering around his cow pasture, rambling on about a castle and magic spells and how much she hated flying.

Severus scowled as he poured himself a cup of tea from the refilling pot on the side table. 'She had the misfortune to find her way back again.'

'What makes you think she was following you, Severus?' Filius piped up from a tall stool next to the sole desk in the room. The Charms professor had two dozen miniature paper cranes flapping around his head - a first year assignment. Some of the cranes were twitching on the floor, victims of inexperienced enchantments. 'Couldn't she have simply been hiding? A game of hide-and-speak?'

Tea in hand, the potions master turned on his heel to glower at his diminutive colleague. 'Miss Boyles has taken to following me through corridors in a manner which she laughingly believes to be surreptitious, leaving anonymous notes on my desk professing her undying devotion, and giggling inanely whenever I pass by her desk in class. It seemed the most _likely _explanation - ruling out the possibility of a poorly-mixed Befuddlement Draft or severe brain trauma.'

His tone indicated that he hadn't ruled out the latter entirely.

'Might it not simply be another Weasley product, Severus?' This observation came from the white-haired witch relaxing in one corner of the room on an elderly green velvet armchair almost as old as the woman who sat in it. Septima Vector's talents in magic were meagre at best, but her skills in reading runes were almost unsurpassed in Britain, and she was infamous in the student body for giving large quantities of homework on obscure translations in an valiant effort to find a worthy successor to her academic legacy. Septima was only a few years younger than Dumbledore, but like him, gave no indication of her age.

'Miriam may simply be silly,' offered Pomona Sprout, glancing back at her colleague. 'She was pining after Douglas Phipps – that dark-haired Ravenclaw - last month, and before that it was some Muggle named 'Johnny Depp' – her essay on the identification of South American Tentacula and its taxonomic relations was _covered_ in his name.'

The Herbology professor didn't have any idea who this Johnny Depp was, not being up to date on recent Muggle history, but couldn't help but dislike him. Miriam had scrawled the name in every square inch of the margins on the parchment with pink sparkling ink and her paper had been quite painful to look at, let alone grade.

'I believe he's a famous 'part-gob', as the Muggles say,' Filius offered helpfully. 'On those electricity boxes with the moving pictures.'

'Heart-throb,' Charity corrected him kindly. 'The quickening of the heart whenever the object of one's affection is in sight'. She held her left hand over her heart as she said this, fluttering her fingers to mimic the pounding beat.

'How very disturbing,' the diminutive wizard whispered to himself. '– and the Muggles actually _enjoy_ this?'

Charity's affirmation of the unnatural muggle affinity for celebrity-induced cardiac abnormalities was drowned out by a piercing scream from the hall outside the staff room, earning a few cursory glances towards the door. It was not an unusual occurrence, after all.

'I believe it is my turn.' said Pomona, rising to her feet with a sigh and making her way over to the door, setting her empty tea cup on the table as she passed by. 'Any guesses?'

'First year scared by a ghost.'

'Dueling injury.'

'Weasleys.'

* * *

It was Minerva who confirmed Severus Snape's suspicions about Miriam Boyle's adolescent adorations the following week, after her seventh year class.

'Your homework for next Wednesday is a two-foot-long parchment detailing the differences between Maeve's Postulate and the New Transfiguratory Theory discussed today. Points will be deducted for sloppy referencing – you should be aware by now that I am reasonably proficient at differentiating between genuine page numbers and those which have been hastily jotted down in a last minute rush that was the result of procrastination. Those that do the latter will receive an automatic failing grade, _regardless_ of the quality of their paper.'

She paused to let this last point sink in, levelling a stern look towards the desk where Dean Thomas and Ron Weasley were sitting. The latter looked quite worried.

'You are dismissed.'

The room of students immediately dropped parchment and quills into their bags and fled as fast as the one-person-at-a-time doorway would let them, jostling each other in an effort to be the first out of class. It was the final class on a Friday and the weekend beckoned with open arms.

'In an _orderly_ fashion!'

The enthusiastic stampede of seventh years staggered comically to a standstill. Under their teacher's watchful eye, the class filed out quietly, with not even the slightest hint of pushing and shoving.

Sending one last scorching look at the backs of the retreating students, Minerva walked back to her desk and began to gather up her teaching materials. She was slipping the last student paper – 'Proto-Transfiguration of the Early Middle Ages and It's Impact on Modern Spells' – into her leather satchel (why hadn't Miss Brown learned the difference between contractions and possessives? Was her ignorance intentional?) when a soft cough made her look up.

Hermione Granger was the only student remaining in the room; her classmates eager to rush off and enjoy every minute of their weekend – at the regrettable expense of neglecting homework and studying. The young woman's book bag was slung across one shoulder and she had the look of someone who had a question, but was hesitant to approach for fear of disturbing her teacher. After seven years of having Hermione in her class, Minerva could read the young woman's body language without thinking about it, although in recent years her student had become far more reserved about approaching her with questions.

'Miss Granger. How may I help you?'

'I'm sorry to bother you on a Friday, Professor,' Hermione said, shifting her heavy bag off her hip so that her books weren't digging into her side, 'but I was wondering if you had read my report yet – the comparative review of Zherdev and Vyhovsky's work that I gave you on Monday.'

Minerva hadn't. Between five staff meetings, fourteen detentions, attending the Ministry function on Wednesday, seeing to a small fire in the third floor wing's eastern corridor that had left one Hufflepuff with a badly burnt forearm and a suspicious (and quite unconvincing) amnesia about _how_ the fire had started in the first place, in addition to teaching all of her classes, there had been very little time to read a paper that was not in need of urgent marking.

'I have not yet had the opportunity, Miss Granger.' Minerva said with a sigh, slipping the last of her teaching materials into her own bag and picking it up off of her desk. 'If you will come with me, I will look at it now before supper.'

Locking the door behind her, Minerva and Hermione walked to the intersection and turned the corner towards the stairs at the end of the next corridor, only to find a crowd of twenty-odd students outside the History of Magic classroom.

A sharp word from the Deputy Headmistress parted the sea of students and revealed the source of all the interest. A plump young girl was tethered to the classroom door by a sturdy set of iron chains.

For someone in this state, she looked remarkably calm.

'Miss Boyles, what the devil are you doing..?!' Minerva exclaimed, aghast.

'Do not approach, sorceress! I remain until my dark prince comes to rescue me!'

'…And where in _Merlin's_ name did you get those chains!?'

'I will only answer the questions of my true love!' came the passionate reply, the chains rattling noisily as Miriam shook her hand towards the sky. The chains in question looked very similar to set that had hung in Argus Filch's storage room for decades, the keeper oiling them every month in anticipation of being allowed to use dark age punishments when the Headmaster finally came to his senses. 'I shall not bandy words with you!'

Having reached her limit of the histrionics of a love-sick fourth year, particularly one who had been idiotic enough to chain herself to a classroom door, Minerva pointed her wand at the nearest of the iron links connected to the teenager.

To everyone's surprise, particularly Minerva McGonagall's; nothing happened.

Twenty-three sets of eyes turned wonderingly back to the girl stuck to the door.

'They are Unbreakable –' Miriam said with conviction, shaking her head in dramatic fashion, curls bouncing girlishly. 'Only Severus, my one true love, the twin of my heart, the match to my soul, can free me.'

And then as an afterthought she added, very unwisely; 'Begone foul enchantress – I shall not yield!'

As one, the crowd of students turned their heads back to Minerva, eager to see what her response to this new challenge would be.

The teacher raised an eyebrow.

With a terrific crack, the metal hinges connecting wood to stone burst apart, showering dust everywhere. At the careless wave of her wand, the now-damaged door flew out of its frame, scooping up the dusty young Hufflepuff still attached to it so as to carry her horizontally - chains and all.

The students applauded enthusiastically. Some cheered. A few were laughing so hard that they were in tears.

Miriam - judging by the sounds she was making - was not happy about this turn of events.

'Don't sulk, Miss Boyles. It is undignified.'

'This isn't how it's supposed to go!' the girl wailed as the door floated obediently behind Minerva; the odd group making their way through the crowd and towards the stairs leading to the first floor. 'You've ruined _everything_! I hate you!'

'As you grow older, you will become better acquainted with disappointment.' her teacher said briskly, turning her attention to the third member of their party. 'Miss Granger, if you would excuse me, I'm afraid I won't be able to meet with you today; this 'foul enchantress' has a package to deliver to the Infirmary.'

And with that, she escorted the still struggling fourth year down to the care of Madame Pomfrey.

* * *

It took two hours, three vials of Bond-Be-Gone, and the combined talents of Professor Flitwick and Professor Snape to separate Miriam and the magicked chains from the History of Magic door. The Hufflepuff had fallen silent when the Potions teacher had walked into the room, but her eyes had burned with a fervent light and she did not look elsewhere save for a glare of loathing thrown at the Deputy Headmistress when she was escorted out the Infirmary by the Charms professor and back to her dormitory, several detentions richer. Severus had already departed to reattach the door to the History of Magic classroom.

'Better watch out for that one, Minerva,' said Poppy as she walked her colleague to the door of the Hospital wing. 'I've seen that look on girls before – no good ever comes of it.'

'I dealt with Voldemort and his Death Eaters for decades, Poppy,' Minerva said dryly, wrapping her scarf around her shoulders. 'I hardly think that a fourteen-year-old girl's personal vendetta will be beyond my coping skills.'

Poppy snorted in disapproval. 'There's nothing worse than a spoiled child, unless it's a spoiled child with rich, gullible parents. Mark my words, she's not going to forget this.'

'I shall risk it.'

Minerva's confidence was misplaced. It took three months, but Miriam exacted her revenge.

* * *

Two and a half months later, the Deputy was called down to the Infirmary to deal with a student issue. When Minerva walked into the hospital wing, the matron was nowhere to be seen and Francine Burl and Andrew McGill - two fifth years - were sitting on the second bed against the windowed wall, locked at the lips with their tongues down one another's throats.

'Stop that!' she snapped. 'Physical displays of affection are inappropriate during school hours.'

Neither Miss Burl nor Mr McGill gave any indication of being aware that she was there. They were too absorbed in kissing each other senseless.

'Don't bother,' said Poppy, coming out of her office carrying two bottles. 'I've already tried - they don't seem to notice anyone aside from each other. I've found something that should work.'

She uncorked both bottles with a dramatic flair and upended them over the amorous couple's heads. 'Calming Draft - extra strong dose.'

Unfortunately, the effect of the potion was short-lived. The students parted for a brief moment, looking dazed and quite damp, but in seconds, they had made eye-contact and leaned in lips first.

'Right then,' huffed Poppy, clearly having lost all patience. She drew her wand from an apron pocket. 'Plan two..._Somnus!_'

The boy and girl fell asleep instantly, collapsing sideways onto the bed sheets with a soft thud.

'Odd,' Poppy frowned at the sleeping pair. 'It's rare that a student charm would be able to resist the potion. I'll have to contact St. Mungo's and see what they say about it.'

'No other reports in the school?'

'No, nothing,' The matron looked thoughtful. 'Unless you count Bertie Baxter's visit yesterday morning, but that was just a simple love spell - a counterspell did the trick.'

'Very well,' Minerva sighed. 'Keep me informed. The last thing we need is another wave of love potions sweeping through the school; the spring of 81' nearly did me in.'

Poppy shivered at the memory. 'Let's hope it doesn't come to that.'

* * *

Four days later, utter chaos that _dwarfed_ the Love Potion Incident of 1981 broke out.

* * *

_(I make no promises about when the second chapter will be). Please alert me to major errors - I didn't review this as well as I might have. __eta; MMHG fans, take heart - you'll like the content of the second chapter more than the first. _


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